On a warm Sunday evening in July 1993, ten-year-old Andrea Gail Parsons left her home in Port Salerno, Florida, for what should have been an ordinary walk through her neighborhood.
She was going to a friend’s house.
She also planned to stop at a nearby grocery store.
It was only a short trip.
Andrea never came home.
More than three decades later, her body has never been found.
And the story of what happened to her has changed several times over the years, involving conflicting accounts, a convicted child molester who became a central figure in the investigation, a second man who was eventually charged with Andrea’s kidnapping and presumed killing, and a case that ended not with a murder conviction, but with a negotiated plea.
This is the story of Andrea Gail Parsons.
July 11, 1993
Andrea was ten years old and living with her family in Port Salerno, a community in Martin County, Florida.
On July 11, 1993, Andrea was near her family’s home in the 4800 block of Southeast Ebbtide Avenue.
Her mother’s boyfriend was looking after her while Andrea’s mother was at work.
At approximately 6 p.m., Andrea was allowed to leave the house.
She was going to visit a friend on Flounder Avenue and stop at a neighborhood grocery store.
The store was only about two blocks from her home.
Nothing about the trip appeared unusual.
Andrea walked toward the store.
Witnesses saw her along the way.
She eventually entered the Port Salerno Grocery Store, where she bought potato chips and candy with the change she had with her.
Then she walked back outside.
That simple purchase would become one of the last confirmed pieces of information about Andrea’s life.
The Last Time Anyone Saw Andrea
After leaving the store, Andrea started walking through the neighborhood.
At some point, people who knew her drove past.
Andrea waved to them.
There were also reports that she may have been collecting aluminum cans around Commerce Avenue and Seward Avenue.
But she never reached her friend’s house.
And she never returned home.
For several hours, her absence was not immediately understood as an emergency.
Then Andrea’s mother came home from work.
It was approximately 10 p.m.
Andrea wasn’t there.
Her mother began searching the neighborhood.
At approximately 11:06 p.m., she reported Andrea missing to the Martin County Sheriff’s Office.
By then, the little girl who had walked to the neighborhood store earlier that evening had disappeared.
A Neighborhood Search
The search began almost immediately.
Investigators went through the area looking for anything that could explain where Andrea had gone.
But there was no child waiting to be found.
No confirmed sighting after the grocery store.
No body.
No clear trail.
And no immediate explanation.
Andrea’s photograph was distributed to the public.
The description investigators released identified her as approximately 4 feet 10 to 4 feet 11 inches tall and weighing about 80 pounds, with brown hair and hazel eyes.
She had been wearing a dark-colored shirt, blue jeans or blue jean shorts, and clear plastic sandals.
The investigation quickly became a missing-child case with the possibility that Andrea had been abducted.
Claude Davis
One of the first people to become a major focus of the investigation was a man named Claude Davis.
Davis lived across the street from Andrea’s family.
Only days after Andrea disappeared, Davis told authorities that he had witnessed something terrifying.
According to his original account, he had seen Andrea being forced into a maroon four-door Oldsmobile by several Hispanic men.
Davis said he was too frightened to intervene.
Investigators now had a possible explanation:
Andrea had been abducted by strangers.
But then Davis’s story changed.
Months after Andrea disappeared, he told investigators a very different story.
This time, he said Andrea had been with him while they were collecting cans.
According to this account, Andrea accidentally fell while climbing out of a dumpster and suffered a fatal injury.
Davis claimed that he panicked.
He said he attempted to get help, but after realizing Andrea was dead, he disposed of her body.
Investigators arrested him on a false-imprisonment charge.
But they could not find Andrea’s remains or develop enough evidence to prosecute him successfully.
The Search for Andrea
Authorities searched for Andrea’s remains.
In December 1993, investigators searched a Martin County landfill.
The scale of the search was enormous.
Investigators ultimately went through approximately 1.5 million cubic yards of garbage.
But Andrea was not found.
Other searches were conducted as investigators attempted to follow information associated with Davis’s changing accounts.
Nothing produced the answer Andrea’s mother desperately needed.
Her daughter was still missing.
And there was still no body.
Davis’s Legal Troubles
The investigation into Davis became complicated by another case.
Authorities discovered evidence that Davis had sexually abused a 14-year-old girl.
He eventually pleaded no contest to molestation-related charges and received probation.
In 1999, Davis violated the terms of that probation by having contact with the victim.
He was subsequently sentenced to nine years in prison.
But the original case involving Andrea remained unresolved.
And there was a crucial legal problem.
Davis had already been arrested for false imprisonment in connection with Andrea’s disappearance in 1993.
Under Florida’s speedy-trial rules, the state had a limited period in which to prosecute him.
The deadline expired without the state bringing the case to trial.
A judge dismissed the false-imprisonment charge.
According to prosecutors, the state could no longer prosecute Davis for his role in the Parsons case.
That decision would become extremely important nearly two decades later.
Andrea’s Case Goes Cold
The years passed.
1994 became 1995.
Then 2000.
Then 2005.
Then 2010.
Andrea was still missing.
Her mother had spent years without knowing what had happened to her daughter.
The investigation remained open, but there was no body and no definitive answer.
Then investigators began taking another look at the case.
New detectives examined thousands of pages of old evidence.
And eventually, attention returned to people who had been connected to Andrea’s disappearance from the beginning.
One of those people was Claude Davis.
Another was a man named Chester Duane Price.
Chester Duane Price
Price had known Andrea and had connections to Claude Davis.
He had also accumulated a substantial criminal record.
By 2012, Price was living in Haleyville, Alabama.
Investigators traveled to Alabama and continued questioning him as they rebuilt the events surrounding July 11, 1993.
Then the investigation took a dramatic turn.
Authorities developed information implicating Price in Andrea’s disappearance.
In November 2012, nearly nineteen years after Andrea vanished, a grand jury indicted Price.
He was charged with first-degree murder and kidnapping a child under the age of 13.
But there was still a problem.
Andrea’s body had never been found.
What Investigators Said Happened
According to investigators and later testimony, Price and Davis were together when Andrea disappeared.
The alleged sequence was horrifying.
Investigators said Andrea was forced into Davis’s van.
According to the account attributed to Davis, Andrea fought to escape.
She bit Price during the struggle.
Price allegedly struck her.
Investigators concluded that Andrea was killed and that her body was disposed of afterward.
But it is important to understand the status of this evidence.
These details were allegations presented by investigators and witnesses in a case that never proceeded to a full murder trial.
Andrea’s body was never recovered.
And Davis—the person whose testimony was central to the prosecution—was himself never prosecuted for Andrea’s disappearance.
The Man Who Could Never Be Charged Again
Davis had become one of the most important witnesses against Price.
But there was something investigators could not change.
Davis’s own 1993 case had already been dismissed after the speedy-trial period expired.
Prosecutors said that prevented them from bringing new charges against him for his alleged role in Andrea’s disappearance.
The man who had once been considered the prime suspect was now potentially a key witness against someone else.
And then, in 2013, everything changed again.
Claude Davis died at his home.
He was 76 years old.
With Davis gone, prosecutors lost the witness whose account formed an important part of the case against Price.
The Case Without Andrea
There was still no body.
There was no definitive physical evidence showing exactly how Andrea died.
And the prosecution’s principal witness was dead.
The state now faced a difficult decision.
It could take Chester Price to trial on the original charges and risk an acquittal.
Or it could negotiate a plea.
Prosecutors ultimately chose the second option.
In March 2014, Price pleaded no contest to reduced charges involving Andrea’s death and kidnapping.
The sentence was ten years in prison.
Because of credit for time already served and other sentencing provisions, he would spend considerably less than ten additional years behind bars.
What Does “No Contest” Mean?
This distinction is important.
Price did not enter a traditional guilty plea to first-degree murder.
Instead, he pleaded no contest to the reduced charges.
A no-contest plea means the defendant does not formally admit guilt in the same way as a guilty plea, but accepts the court’s punishment rather than contesting the charges at trial.
So when discussing this case, it is more accurate to say that Price pleaded no contest and was sentenced rather than saying that a jury convicted him of murdering Andrea.
That difference matters.
Because there was never a murder trial that established every detail of what happened to Andrea beyond a reasonable doubt.
Andrea Was Still Missing
And then there was the question that remained after the plea.
Where was Andrea?
The plea did not lead investigators to her remains.
The searches had failed.
The landfill search had failed.
Other searches had failed.
Andrea’s body had never been recovered.
Her mother still did not have the one thing families of missing children hope for most:
the chance to bring their child home.
Even after Price’s plea, Andrea remained officially missing.
The Years That Followed
Price eventually completed his prison sentence and was released after serving only a portion of the original ten-year sentence because of credit and sentence reductions.
His case did not end with the kind of resolution that Andrea’s family had hoped for.
There was no trial revealing every detail.
There was no recovery of Andrea’s body.
And there was no definitive answer to every question surrounding the night of July 11, 1993.
The case remains a painful example of what happens when a child disappears and the physical evidence needed to reconstruct the crime is never recovered.
What Happened to Andrea?
That is the question that has never completely gone away.
Andrea was ten years old.
She left home for a short walk.
She bought chips and candy.
She was seen afterward.
And somewhere between that neighborhood store and the place where she was supposed to return home, Andrea disappeared.
Her family waited.
Investigators searched.
Landfills were examined.
Suspects were questioned.
Stories changed.
One suspect became a witness.
That witness died.
Another man accepted a plea deal.
But Andrea herself was never brought home.
More Than Thirty Years Later
Imagine being Andrea’s mother.
You know the last ordinary things your daughter did.
You know what she was wearing.
You know what she bought at the store.
You know approximately where she was walking.
You know that she was supposed to come home.
And then you have to live through every birthday after that.
Every Christmas.
Every July.
Every year wondering whether someone knows where your child is.
For Andrea’s family, there was never a final goodbye.
Only an empty space where the answer should have been.
Andrea Gail Parsons
Andrea disappeared on July 11, 1993.
She was ten years old.
She went to a neighborhood store.
She bought candy and chips.
She walked away.
And she never came home.
Years later, authorities charged Chester Duane Price in connection with her disappearance and presumed death.
Price ultimately pleaded no contest to reduced charges and received a ten-year sentence.
But Andrea’s remains were never recovered.
And that means that, even after all these years, one part of her story remains unfinished.
Where is Andrea Parsons?
That question is still waiting for an answer.
And until Andrea is found, her story is not truly over.
Andrea was not just a name in an old case file.
She was a ten-year-old girl who left her house one summer evening expecting to come home.
She never got the chance.
And her family never got the chance to bring her home.
This story is based on publicly available information and reported facts. It has been independently written and presented for informational purposes. Images, if any, belong to their respective owners.
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